Since 1997, Philips Healthcare has been developing a software platform for its medical-equipment product line. Initially, the company used a closed-source approach, with a centralized platform development group. In the course of development, this process has evolved into a more open-source approach in which Philips Healthcare's entire software development community contributes to platform development. Making such a transition is not trivial. Given the typical OSS culture, a top-down approach—essentially forcing groups to become suppliers on the internal software market—won't work. For groups to switch from being consumers to being suppliers, they must have incentives and find the prospect attractive. Philips Healthcare has been working toward an internal open-source market for more than five years. In this article, the author describes the company's evolving process along with lessons learned about market mechanisms and business models for the internal software market. The key question guiding their efforts is how to turn software consumers into active producers of the platform assets.

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